Reason I’ve been neglecting them is that I was working on a polls and coalition overview, which is now finally finished. In the future I can give a brief overview of every new poll and refer you to this page for the details, as well as the poll trends.

The page also contains a coalition creation game, where you can try your hand at forming a stable majority coalition, and find out why it takes so bloody long.

Tomorrow we’ll get the next Peil.nl poll, and it’s going to be the first one that will show how the recent leadership changes in the SP and PvdA, as well as the increasing leadership chaos in the CDA, will work out. Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, let’s take a look at some other polls Peil.nl published (no direct link due to the suckiness of its Web interface). The main question is obviously what effect Bos’s departure and Cohen’s instatement as PvdA party leader have.

The central question is whether Cohen’s succession makes people more or less likely to vote PvdA. As usual, this is split out by what people voted in the last elections.

“I wasn’t planning to vote PvdA, but now I will [certainly/possibly] do so.“ Of the 2006 PvdA voters, 11% agreed. Among SP and GL voters, this is even higher: 16% and 17%, respectively. Thus, Cohen sucks away votes from the PvdA’s left-wing competitors.

This is not unexpected; Cohen generally appears to be a bit more left-wing than Bos, who in the end remained a Purple, centrist politician. So will Cohen lose on the right what he gains on the left?

Not so much. Although no right-wing or CU voters stated they’ll certainly vote PvdA, the amount of possible PvdA voters is now 5% among CDA and VVD voters, and 8% among CU voters. That’s not a huge amount, but it shows Cohen may also have some appeal to moderate right-wing voters. (Unfortunately D66 is missing here; in 2006 it won only 3 seats, which makes it statistically very hard to say anything useful about 2006 D66 voters.)

As to the opposite, voters who liked Bos but not Cohen, they hardly register. 1% of past PvdA, SP, CDA, and CU voters are less likely to vote PvdA because of Cohen. Still a clear gain.

Then the prime minister question. Who’d you prefer to see as prime minister? In the long list, Cohen leads with 30%, against 14% for Balkenende, 12% for Wilders, and 9-10% each for Halsema (GL), Pechtold (D66), and Rutte (VVD). That’s good.

It becomes even better when the choices are restricted to Cohen, Balkenende, and Wilders. 55%, 25%, and 17%, respectively. The vast majority of the supporters of the other candidates prefers Cohen above his right-wing competitors, in other words.

All in all it seems that Cohen’s succession does not hurt the PvdA at all, and might even increase the speed with which it moved upwards in the polls.

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Polls, polls, polls — Cohen edition

I’ve been neglecting the recent polls a bit. Each week, Peil.nl (Maurice de Hond) and the Politieke Barometer publish their ongoing general election polls (on Sunday and Thursday, respectively), and this are obviously prime data sources for any Dutch political blog.

Reason I’ve been neglecting them is that I was working on a polls and coalition overview, which is now finally finished. In the future I can give a brief overview of every new poll and refer you to this page for the details, as well as the poll trends.

The page also contains a coalition creation game, where you can try your hand at forming a stable majority coalition, and find out why it takes so bloody long.

Tomorrow we’ll get the next Peil.nl poll, and it’s going to be the first one that will show how the recent leadership changes in the SP and PvdA, as well as the increasing leadership chaos in the CDA, will work out. Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, let’s take a look at some other polls Peil.nl published (no direct link due to the suckiness of its Web interface). The main question is obviously what effect Bos’s departure and Cohen’s instatement as PvdA party leader have.

The central question is whether Cohen’s succession makes people more or less likely to vote PvdA. As usual, this is split out by what people voted in the last elections.

“I wasn’t planning to vote PvdA, but now I will [certainly/possibly] do so.“ Of the 2006 PvdA voters, 11% agreed. Among SP and GL voters, this is even higher: 16% and 17%, respectively. Thus, Cohen sucks away votes from the PvdA’s left-wing competitors.

This is not unexpected; Cohen generally appears to be a bit more left-wing than Bos, who in the end remained a Purple, centrist politician. So will Cohen lose on the right what he gains on the left?

Not so much. Although no right-wing or CU voters stated they’ll certainly vote PvdA, the amount of possible PvdA voters is now 5% among CDA and VVD voters, and 8% among CU voters. That’s not a huge amount, but it shows Cohen may also have some appeal to moderate right-wing voters. (Unfortunately D66 is missing here; in 2006 it won only 3 seats, which makes it statistically very hard to say anything useful about 2006 D66 voters.)

As to the opposite, voters who liked Bos but not Cohen, they hardly register. 1% of past PvdA, SP, CDA, and CU voters are less likely to vote PvdA because of Cohen. Still a clear gain.

Then the prime minister question. Who’d you prefer to see as prime minister? In the long list, Cohen leads with 30%, against 14% for Balkenende, 12% for Wilders, and 9-10% each for Halsema (GL), Pechtold (D66), and Rutte (VVD). That’s good.

It becomes even better when the choices are restricted to Cohen, Balkenende, and Wilders. 55%, 25%, and 17%, respectively. The vast majority of the supporters of the other candidates prefers Cohen above his right-wing competitors, in other words.

All in all it seems that Cohen’s succession does not hurt the PvdA at all, and might even increase the speed with which it moved upwards in the polls.

<— The politics of succession; CDA and PvdA editions | New Peil.nl poll —>

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